


Operator, please, this is wrecking my mind

by enbyofdionysus



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, M/M, angst!sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 01:31:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5397836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enbyofdionysus/pseuds/enbyofdionysus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Percy looks dumbfounded.</p><p>Apollo presses closer if ever such a thing was possible, pressing his lips hard enough to Percy's neck to feel his pulse. “Let me make you immortal,” he repeats. His hand moves between them, squeezes between them, until it finds the outline of Percy's cock. He hears Percy's breath hitch, the tiny moan he's always loved. “Please,” he says, pumping Percy's slow and tight, running his thumb unrelentingly beneath the head. “Please.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Operator, please, this is wrecking my mind

The memorial service was awful.

Apollo sat a few rows back away from the family in the hopes of going unnoticed, just another black suit in the sea of mourners. He sees Will in the first row beside his mortal sister and her two-year-old daughter. Will is older now, in his mid-twenties, with that vague sign of aging beneath the eyes he's seen in all his children over the course of the centuries.

Apollo spent more time watching Will than he did listening to the Pastor chew on gospel verses. He'd heard the same thing many times over with not enough fingers to count.

It wasn't that the Pastor was wrong, Apollo knew. Jill would, undoubtedly, go to Elysium. She led too great a life, helping others in their time of need and often working double shifts at the hospital in her small town in Minnesota if only to help console the loved ones of those who had died.

He remembered the first time they'd met. She'd been sitting on a bench in front of Linehan Park, still dressed in her scrubs, with her hands over her face. A baby had just died.

They'd done everything, she said. Everything. The child should have been stabilized, there was no reason for them not to be, and yet they had died. He remembered feeling amused at the harshness in her voice when she declared between tears “If anyone else tells me it happened for a reason, I'll stab them with a scalpel.”

Will had her eyes, her fierceness, her bluntness.

Apollo watched him stand with his sister and slide out slowly from the pew, watched him take the Eucharist and the wine.

“Would you like to go up?” he heard an elderly man beside him ask with unusual softness.

Apollo hadn't realized he'd been crying. He wiped his cheeks and shook his head, but stood so the other gentleman could leave the pew to participate in the communion.

After the communion was over, the floor opened to family members to tell stories or sing music in honor of Jill. Will didn't stand up, Apollo noticed. His face was too contorted in emotion; he didn't want to cry in front of an audience. Jill's brother stood, however, a guitar in hand. His voice, Apollo praised, had always been beautiful and his following song regarding the mercy of God, the beauty of life, and the rawness of loss had Apollo once again in tears. Other family members told stories, some amusing, others touching.

Apollo hated every moment of it. He always did.

Humans had been made by Prometheus in the image of the gods. They had their jealousy, their rage, their pride, their desire, their joy, their love. But they had been made from clay and air and were so fragile.

So fragile Apollo has sat at funerals just like this one for every mortal lover he's ever had. So fragile Apollo has stood at funerals just like this one for every mortal child he's ever had. He's sat in pews, taken communion, done _keriah_ , recited Salat al-Janazah, lit pyres, placed coins in loved one's mouths. It gets old. It gets boring. But mostly, it gets horrifically depressing. 

He wanted to laugh at the humans who wrote of the sadness of immortal life, the Byronic heroes lamenting seeing their loved ones die. Didn't these mortals know what Apollo knew? You didn't need to be immortal to watch your loved ones die one by one. He's seen it in the eyes of his children, in the eyes of his lovers, in the eyes of the mortals with which he's grown attached to. He's seen it in the mirror.

The only difference between him and them was that Thanatos stood waiting for all of them, that Hermes was on call for all of them, but not for Apollo.

*

Maybe it was because of the day and how funerals always have Apollo staring at mortals like they're ticking time bombs, but Apollo ends up making a surprise appearance in the basement of the Jackson house.

He's on edge, anxiety and desperation pulling at his nerves as he makes his way across the carpeted floor, running his fingers along the back of a beaten up leather chair facing an old television. 

His attire changes as he moves, the black suit changing to a white v-neck and jeans, not wanting to be reminded of Jill's fading smile, of her pained sounds, of the tube shoved down her throat to help her breathe, to Will's broken voice telling him they would need to cremate her because they couldn't even make her  _ look _ as if she'd been alive.

He hears the door open and close upstairs, hears the shuffle of keys and a winter jacket. Apollo leans against the leather couch, feeling nothing and everything all at once, and waits. Right on time, the basement door opens and Apollo follows the sound of footsteps down wooden stairs until boots appear, until jean-clad calves appear, until beautiful thighs appear, until Percy appears with a laundry basket on his hip, mumbling something that sounds vaguely like The Black Keys.

It takes until Percy has shoved a pile of dresses, shorts, and knee-high soccer socks into the washing machine for him to notice and when he does he startles hard with a loud “Fucking  _ fuck _ !”

“Such grace,” Apollo quips.

Percy leans against the washing machine with his hand over his chest, eyes closed and waiting for his heart rate to return to normal. For all of the sadness that comes with the fragility of mortality, Apollo has to admit it can also be extremely fun. 

He waits for Percy's green eyes to open and meet his. He smiles when they do. “Hello, Percy.”

“Lord Apollo,” Percy greets, tripping over the word 'Lord.' “What can I help you with?” There's an edge in his voice that's always made Apollo hard, that defiant “I'm not your pawn” attitude matched with the realization that he really was.

Apollo doesn't answer right away, but he saunters up to him, a rush moving through his body at the lack of response Percy gives him. There's no retreat, no attempt to make himself smaller. Percy matches him stance for stance.

Apollo takes advantage of it, pressing his body into Percy's and running his fingers up through the back of his black curls. They're the same height, Apollo notices, but while Apollo is smooth-faced, Percy has grown a small amount of stubble that makes him look eerily like Poseidon.

Percy is relaxed through the entire display. They've done this before, plenty of times, and so when Apollo arches his back and opens his mouth, Percy easily moves into the kiss and accepts it.

He begins to frown, though, when Apollo suddenly becomes a lot more handsy than usual. Apollo is usually all about his mouth and fingers, all teasing touches and hot kisses. But now, for some reason unknown to him, he just needs to  _ feel _ Percy.

Apollo pulls the demigod away from the washing machine in order to push him against the wall, his hands pressing into Percy's pectorals and down his abs and back up, moving across his arms and over his shoulders, cupping his face and feeling the scratch of Percy's growing beard against his thumbs.

“What–” Percy begins, but Apollo silences him with another kiss, this one more desperate than the last and suddenly the anxiety begins to shred Apollo apart piece by piece. His usual performative confidence dissipates and the kissing becomes slower until Apollo is hanging onto to Percy's lower lip with his teeth. They're incredibly close, breathing each others air. He can feel how hard Percy is in his jeans, can feel the desire for Apollo to continue, to fuck Percy until his shitty neighbors' drain pipes burst.

But there's a look of concern on Percy's face and suddenly there's surprisingly smooth thumbs running just beneath Apollo's eyes.

“Hey,” Percy says, soft and low. “What's going on?”

Apollo can't look at him for a moment, much too vulnerable and much too scared. “Let me make you immortal,” he finally says, finding Percy's eyes.

Percy looks dumbfounded. 

Apollo presses closer if ever such a thing was possible, pressing his lips hard enough to Percy's neck to feel his pulse. “Let me make you immortal,” he repeats. His hand moves between them, squeezes between them, until it finds the outline of Percy's cock. He hears Percy's breath hitch, the tiny moan he's always loved. “Please,” he says, pumping Percy's slow and tight, running his thumb unrelentingly beneath the head. “Please.”

“But,” Percy chokes, his thighs attempting to spread wider. He holds onto Apollo like a support beam, the v-neck wrinkling in his fists. “I'm doing laundry.”

The answer makes Apollo laugh, just briefly, before he pulls Percy toward the leather couch on which they've fucked, made love, and berated each other on multiple occasions.

He kisses down Percy's thighs, kisses Percy breathless, sucks on Percy's nipples until the demigod beneath him is begging him to take him. But Apollo never gives up his plea. Every kiss, every scratch, every lick, every thrust Apollo sighs into his ear “Let me make you immortal. Let me make you immortal. Let me make you immortal.”

Because he needs it, needs it more than Percy's mouth, than Percy's tongue, than Percy's moans. 

He needs Percy not to be next.

He can't be at Percy's funeral.

He can't watch Percy have an oxygen mask get put over his face.

He can't watch Percy have a tube placed down his throat.

He can't watch Percy's organs fail.

He can't watch Percy's body reject treatment.

He can't watch, he can't watch.

“Let me make you immortal,” he begs as his hips snap into their thrusts, as Percy's face contorts at the pleasure Apollo won't let him escape. He goes harder, just the way Percy likes it, his hands on the demigod's shoulders like bolts, and takes in the way Percy's eyes water at the intensity of it, the way he goes silent as his orgasm builds.

Apollo holds him as he comes, burying his face in Percy's neck and taking in every sensation he can. The sound of Percy's desperate breaths, the sound of his heartbeat, the smell of his sweat, the warmth of his skin. So very alive and so very here.

“Let me keep you,” Apollo whispers and if he's being honest with himself it sounds like a prayer. “Please,” he says again against Percy's collarbone. “Let me keep you.”

 


End file.
